Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Praetorian Guards set up an auction. They decided to say to the Roman people, 'You decide. Whoever can pay us the most amount of money can become emperor,' and that is what happened. There was an auction between a guy called Sulpicianus, who was the father-in-law of Pertinax, and Didius Julianus. Sulpicianus started the bidding at 5,000 drachmas, but eventually Didius Julianus won at 6,200. It was an unbecoming act for the empire. It was effectively a standing auction on who could be emperor. Unfortunately, I think something is happening with the Australian body politic as well at the moment, because we are being subject to a bidding process through polls and popularity, not through the policy consequences of what we are doing. It is an unbecoming process and it is not one that I think the Australian people hold us in high regard for doing. If we continue to enter into this cycle and continue to be slaves to an announcement of polling results every fortnight, the Australian people will continue to think less of us every time.

In my view, we should seek to re-establish trust in this chamber and in the other chamber and in this parliament—a trust that has deteriorated and been downgraded in the past eight years. We have become fat and lazy and complacent on a couple of decades of very good government. Now we—and I think all political parties have been subject to this in the past few years—have failed to show that leadership, that constancy, that consistency and that stability that the Australian people expect of us. We will not restore our trust until we can rekindle and refine what we had not that long ago.

I am standing at the Whip's chair. I am a National Party senator and I am very proud. I want to make comment on other political parties, but I am very proud that the National Party has had 12 leaders in 95 years. While those leaders have gone through great tumult and change through decades, there has been a very reliable element of constancy, stability and certainty from the National Party and, before that, the Country Party. When you read National Party history, there is a great story. After Earle Page lost the leadership, Archie took over briefly, but there was a bit of tumult at the time and there was a leadership spill between John McEwen and another gentleman whose name escapes me—he never became leader. John McEwen tied the leadership with this guy in 1939, I think. They could not break the tie, so they installed Arthur Fadden as a temporary leader, but then, of course, World War II broke out—